Oh my goodness, my sister Kate is pregnant!

She and Carl are expecting a baby in September. And while I am really incredibly happy for her, I am also sad. I’m sad because my baby sister is grown up. Sad because life is changing, and I am missing out on stuff. Missing my sister, and this unbelievable time in her life. Missing my nieces and nephews growing up. Missing my friends and their new families and homes. Everyone I know is having a baby – Kate, Alex, Tonia, Jessica, Jo. The big news in my life tends to be what trip I have planned, or what I did over the weekend. I sometimes feel my lifestyle and choices are frivolous and irresponsible. Everyone is more adult than me.

I’m 32 – I rent the cheapest flat possible, I have almost no furniture, and I live paycheck to paycheck. I have no pension plan, no career plan, and I can’t even drive a car. My biggest ambition is to run away and travel the world. And I am suddenly acutely aware of time – I used to think I had all the time in the world for anything I wanted to do. But the reality is, I don’t. Doing one thing potentially precludes doing another, or postponing certain stuff indefinitely. I can’t have it all.

It upsets me – I don’t want to feel like I am missing out on the really important stuff in life, just for the opportunity to have easy city breaks to Paris. I want to be there when Kate’s baby is born, and be the fun aunt who buys the clothes and music that mum won’t, and the one who commiserates when other adults don’t understand, and the one who encourages them to go abroad and skydive and run marathons. I want to influence them to do the things and live the life they want, even when their parents are too afraid to be supportive. I want to be important to them – I don’t want to be the aunt they never see and barely know.

And I’m sad because it means the end of doing things with just my sister, just because we want to. No more spending the day together just because we have nothing else we’d rather do. No road trips to New Orleans. When you have a kid, things have to be planned. And I will miss that potential for spontaneity and completely unstructured time together. Because those were always the best – I could drop by and we’d go to a movie, or take the dog for a drive, or a walk on the beach. I always figured at some point we’d have that time again.

My sister is having a baby. And I am 3000 miles away.

In other unimportant news: the weekend was a bit of a binge-fest. Kerryn had his b-day drinks on Friday night – jack daniels, tequila, and sambuca shots galore. I was surprisingly sober after 4 shots and 5 vodka drinks. My liver must look like a walnut. Kerryn on the other hand, being a) a big flyweight when it comes to alcohol, and b) being the birthday boy, had to be cabbed home the two blocks.

Sunday was a mixed adult/kiddies party, with hoardes of four year olds. Given our less-than-perky condition, more alcohol was required to make it through tha afternoon alive. A thoroughly enoyable and completely unproductive Sunday afternoon was spent in the pub, after which k & t came back to our place, i cooked some gigantic meatball subs, and we watched a movie into the evening.

Somehow it all seems a little less important today.

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